The 4 major risks for IT assets

The 4 major risks for IT assets

IT is now omnipresent in all company departments. Each employee is impacted by the orientations, strategies and implementation of the IT resource within the company. All transactions and information are stored and shared digitally to track, facilitate and optimize your employees’ tasks.

Developments related to IT involve many risks since the digitisation of these tasks can weaken or even jeopardise the company’s sustainability if they are poorly managed. For many companies that want to maximize the security of their IT assets, IT is even becoming an economic challenge.

The recent cyber attacks (Wannacry and NotPetya, to name but a few) have succeeded in truly paralysing the activities of companies affected by the virus, even paralysing stores and therefore sales!

It is therefore necessary for you to understand the risks involved in this world 2.0. Discover in detail the 4 major risks for your IT equipment.

1. Poor user behaviour

Communication with your users is essential. Indeed, a misinformed user is a user who is likely to commit irreparable damage when using their workstation. The repercussions can be more or less serious. In the best case, the security breach will impact a single user who will have to get closer to his helpdesk to find the use of his workstation. In the worst case, a security breach can impact all your IT assets, spreading from workstation to workstation through your network for example.

We have identified for you the main mistakes that a user could make:

Visiting dangerous websites leading to infection

Illegal downloads that could lead to legal problems

Changes that would cause the system to malfunction

Unintentional clicks to action scattered in fraudulent emails

This is why it is first necessary to inform users – via an IT charter – of the good practices they must adopt when using the company’s equipment. In a second step, monitoring must be put in place to ensure that there is a minimum of control over the substations.

Finally, training sessions on good IT security practices, posters, regular communications can be a good way to share the good reflexes of IT in companies with the largest numbers.

2. The “Ransomware” or “Ransomware”

This malicious computer software steals data or blocks access to Windows to demand a financial ransom and thus take the company’s activity hostage.

This type of virus is often generated via a download or by data received. To claim to recover the stolen data, the hacker usually asks for a sum of money in virtual currency (Bitcoins), thus remaining anonymous.

Ransomware is the first cyber security threat in companies. According to It Social, 34% of the victim companies paid the ransom and 42% reported having stopped working for more than 9 hours, which is quite substantial and constraining. Altospam also states that 4.34% of the emails received are “Ransomware”.

3. Cyber-spying

Cyber-spying is possible via spyware, it is a so-called classic virus, about 20,000 SMEs are concerned each year. Spy yes, but why?

Industrial espionage in order to steal patents, recipes, trade secrets…

To recover customer data and resell it

To damage the company’s image

To destroy data

4. Data loss

Digitizing all data is a time-saving but risky process. This information must be protected in the best way, especially if it is sensitive. A loss of this data could slow down the company or even put it at risk. These losses may be due to a natural disaster such as:

An electrical disaster

A fire

A water damage

Or by human intervention:

Theft of equipment

Human error

It is therefore important for the company to maximize its protection and anticipate the risks involved. New technologies are emerging to address these issues, such as the famous “Cloud”.

IT these days is a complex, tedious and time-consuming field. In addition, it requires particular attention on certain aspects.

Data is increasingly digitised, all tasks are carried out using IT tools. Many specific points require to be well interlinked together to guarantee total security and sustainability of the entire park.

Faced with these problems, it is important to opt for an optimal management and security solution.

The ceBox® solution is a real security asset for the IT department

By having a homogeneous fleet, patched and updated in 100% of cases and this as soon as a Windows update or patch is available, your users are protected against ransomware.

In addition, if the IT department has not been able to make a security patch available to users, a simple restart makes it possible to restore the production of all workstations, without paralyzing the company’s activity!

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Wisper is one of the major publishers of dedicated software for the virtualization of Workstations (VDI). While our vision is to reinvent VDI to offer efficient workstations with the lowest TCO of the market… Learn more about Wisper